Synchronization of ProMove-mini to an external camera using a LED

November 23, 2016

We receive often the question how to synchronize the ProMove-mini inertial sensor nodes to external systems, such as cameras.

This is possible with the Advanced Inertia Gateway that has two BNC I/O ports for such purposes. The I/O ports can be configured in Inertia Studio as:
– Trigger (Input or Output), which is useful for synchronizing for example start and stop moments or other events. The time instance of the Trigger action is marked in the data log.
– Sync (Input or Output), which uses a periodic clock signal to synchronize the sampling of ProMove-mini sensors to an external system.

Sometimes however, the external camera system does not have the possibility of Trigger or Sync synchronization. In such case, it is still possible to synchronize at least in an indirect (optical) manner with the video recording. A LED diode with a resistor can be attached to one of the I/O ports and switched on and off from Inertia Studio. The moment when the LED is turned on is marked in the log file. In this way, the IMU log will be synchronized with the video recording.